1967-68: My Year in NYC

   "Where do you want to go?" I was asked.  If the year was 1967 & I was in South Carolina, trust me:  that was as loaded a question as you could ask me.  For some reason I chose New York City.  Why NYC, you might innocently ask.  & my response would surely be, back then, because that is where I started from.
  It was only later, once they had handed me my ticket & were walking me to the place where the taxi was waiting, that I was told: ". . . but, you could have chosen anywhere in the United States.  You could have said California.  & if I had, oh how different things might be today.
  But, looking back 45 years, I can only assume that Fate itself was at work here.  I had a working knowledge of  how to get around in New York & I thought, if I worked at it, I might get lucky & get into the world of entertainment; cut an album maybe.  Meet other musicians, definitely.  And I had remnants of family there:  my father in Matawan, New Jersey;  my sister, Jacky, out in Nassau County on Long Island.
  It was logical.  But, maybe too logical, really.
  Now, here in 2012, I wish I had chosen Calilfornia.  Because this year I am to describe to you was lonely; often I was afraid; not at all productive &, at the end of it, I believed less in myself & much less in all of my friends from Goddard.  So, maybe the most positive spin I will put on it is:  I learned how to face things I was uncomfortable with & the importance of having a life that was, at the very least, fun. 

I Limp Into Chicago -- On "The Dog" & Meet Mamet's "Step-Family"?

      From the "David Mamet" weblisting: "HARRY RANSOM CENTER: University of Texas at Austin: David Mamet: An Inventory of His Papers
      Manuscript Collection Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

      http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/press/2007/mamet.html

      "David Alan Mamet was born November 30, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. [not true: Mamet was born in Flossamoor, Illionis; ed.]
       "His father, Bernard Morris Mamet, was a labor lawyer, and his mother, Lenore June Silver Mamet, was a teacher.       Mamet’s parents divorced in 1958.

      "Mamet was introduced to the Theater as a teenager, when he worked backstage at Hull House Theatre and as a busboy at the improvisational comedy troupe Second City.
      After graduating from Francis W. Parker High School in Chicago, Mamet attended Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, studying drama and literature. He also spent a year studying acting with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. . . etc"

            ****

   I am sitting here, with my new (& only) friend, a Dell Studio desktop computer, in the year 2010, listening to Howling' Wolf wail.["Howlin' Wolf: His Best, Vol.2" Chess Records], and this seems most approrpriate, to be writing about Mamet & me, back in the days, pre-dating Mamet's quick ascension to Fame [the early to mid-'70's]--- listening to a Chess Records recording, Chicago Culture, to the Max, contemplating this precious manuscript collection he just donated[?] recently to that library in Austin.
      & Howlin' Wolfe, man! Chess Records, dude, The REAL CHICAGO BLUES, brother & the Glory Days of R&B, which in 1967, was the Soundtrack for all us Good Ole' Boys led like sheep towards a Blessed Fascist Oblivion in Viet Nam.
      Howlin' Wolfe: One of the Godfathers of that era's most astonishing birth: The Rolling Stones. & Where am I, now? Doing just what I was doing in 1966: Playing music, writing tunes and lyrics & thinking about all that could still be. The Eternal Optimist: I now sit here, looking out on a tiny little snowstorm eleven floors above Asheville, North Carolina.
      The whores on South French Broad Avenue have not given up, yet. They haven't got their hit of crack for the night. &, Fuck, all the stores are closed down because of the snowfall & so, horny whites, deprived of their favorite bar, are out driving around in their SUV's, looking for some black chick to pump on for her twenty bucks, eleven stories below.
       Yep, Howlin' Wolfe would understand. But the question is, would David Mamet? Strangely, I doubt it. A hit of crack? For What? Depraved, he would probably think.       But, lo, I do understand, as does Dylan I KNOW, to this day, ". . . the misdemeanor outlaw, chained & cheated by pursuit. . .".
      Yes, I Have Been There, Brother. I lived and still do live, On The Fringes of a Society that typically carries around pieces of plastic rather than cash.       "You got a dollar, lady? I need to catch a bus."
      "Oh, no, I don't have anything," she says, as she opens the door to her Mercedes.       So I Still Am There. Was David EVER, "There"? & A Necessary Question to ask --- David Mamet: "Voice of a Generation"; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Screeplay. One is seduced into thinking, while reading Mamet's plays & watching his movies, reading his many clever essays, marveling at his recent play, "RACE" on Broadway [still running tonight, as I write] --- one would think --- Yes, Maybe Mamet was "There" and maybe still is.
       Well, Hey, Mamet!! uh, Austin, Texas!!?! How you missed the University of Chicago? --- your old stomping ground in Hyde Park? or, not Northwestern, maybe? TEXAS = TEX-ASS: Where did THAT come from?
      Make A Note: Ask Michael Ventura about this. Oh, I always forget, Ventura Another Sunbug, I am afraid: although blessedly a more righteous one, for sure.
      Strange, after I wrote Ventura & told him I was writing about Mamet and this period of time on the internet, infact sent him a long written US Postal paper letter --- I Never Heard From Ventura since. & That was 2 months ago.
      OK: Professional jealousy, perhaps. Or something more devious & secret that only "Writers" hate having revealed. I can never tell what you guys are thinking. So I just stick to what I remember about this time. I aint no recognized genius like y'all.       [& Remember, reader, he was the one that cracked that egg --- in baptism of my little 10 Speed Bike, 12 days before, when I made my virtuous and locally despised speech to my fellow Goddard Classmates.]        Ventura, still, to this day, gets a paycheck from The Austin Chronicle, the local rag thereabouts.
      & Somehow Ventura still manages to hold down a Real Job with a Real Newspaper there in Texas, of all places [he grew up in the Bronx, for God's Sake!] here, in these horible, viscious days of the New Millenium, that pits one unlucky soul [who wants to write for a living] against another.
                        ****

            OK: Where Was I? when I broke off at my last posting?
      Oh, Right! -- wandering & weaving in and out of traffic, coasting down Vermont paved roads like the wind, in a May Spring, 1966, aiming for Chicago, on my 10 speed bicycle; with just a frayed sleeping bag & a prayer, leaving the womb of Vermont behind, heading to Big Bad Chicago, drunk on a well-founded-Fear of the US Army Draft infecting my brain + a whole lot of strange hope in my heart, put there by my Best Friend: David Mamet: Lord help me.
      This blog is about "The Fickle Finger of Fame: etc.": SO: NONE! of ~Sunbugs~ is ABOUT ME. AT ALL!
      Who, me? Don't Blame Me, man: I didn't do nothin'! . . . see, Mister! -- Puhleaze!!
      I. AM. JUST. THE. MESSENGER.
      Simple, "Famous Last Words" of the kind of fool I was and still am, I am afraid: & about as close to any Fame of my own as I will ever get on this planet.
      "When You Play, You Pay" --- as they say in Amerika. And this I was to learn the hard way. In Chicago.
      SO: When I got to Chicago --- on a sweet and exhausting journey of my own, [which I never even told my children about, it was too personal & I would never tell you either, I assure you] I was greeted at the bus station by a man named "Bernie" in a big, long, white Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
      Was it a convertible? It Sure seems like it, in my memory. & If it wasn't a convertible, it might as well have been.
      Bernie looked me over: "Eric Wells? We have heard a lot about you from David. So you rode your bike all the way from Vermont? You're one brave guy." Bernie eyes roved over my whole frame, as I stood there, after bouncing off the bus. The ususal flurry of passengers holding their baggage claims, the exhaust of the diesel fumes, the late afternoon Midwestern sunlight bearing down on us, humid and bleak.
      Bernie's eyes were going up and down my whole young & innocent frame: tanned from eleven days pumping sweat in Upstate New York & then Ohio. I remember I dressed in shorts with a bandana around my head, previously worn to keep off the sweat from dripping into my eyes. I was curious why David was not there. Interested, too, that Bernie recognized me Right Off. I had kicked back in Shaker Heights for 2 days, at a friend's house. His mother had come onto me and I only missed having sex with her because her son would not leave us alone. So, I missed my "The Graduate" experience, but I remember what a hard-on I had for a woman who could have been my mother.
      & Even though I had cheated and caught the Greyhound from Cleveland, it was all in spirit of: This Is Gonna Be Fun!! & People: If I had not ridden all the way from Plainfield, Vermont, Let Me Tell You, I sure did FEEL like it.
      Bernie & Me: we were standing there, in 1966, almost Summer, in some suburb; it must have been Gary Indiana. Not Big Bad Chicago, Not The Loop, DownTown: Nope, This was Mamet Territory: the Suburbs. Where all of us White Boys lived and dined and screwed and cheated our way forward during this dirty year of 1966. Bernie looked me over.          Get in, son. David is at home, waiting for you. He had a few things to do. He told me to pick you up. Where's your bike?" he asked.
      "Oh, I had to ship it, sir. . . it'll be coming separate. The bus driver wouldn't let me take it in the hold on this bus. They said in three days my bike will be here. I gave them the address David gave me."
      There was Mamet, standing in the driveway, when Bernie & I drove in. He said, "You MADE it!! Let me show you the place."
      David led me through the garage entrance into a standard suburban home, although it was larger than most. You entered [from the garage] into the kitchen. Beyond, stretched a huge assortment of Living Rooms, before, in the very back, was a number of bedrooms. What became apparent, after the tour he gave me, that this was a house built of plastic. It was a Plastic Nightmare of doileys and little brick-brac; utterly tasteless [even disturbing] phony, dopey, cutesey pictures on the wall, formica every where &, worst of all, a kind of early version of a futon for a bed to sleep on, that David showed me how to withdraw from a hidden place under a set of cushions, so I had a place to sleep. I suddenly thought, "Thank God for the Garage!!" as it was the only Real Place in the whole house. His step mother fixed a plate of sandwiches. David was clearly uncomfortable with these people. It was like he was trapped there and had led me into a trap that, now that I had committed myself, I was trapped too.
          Days later, Berger arrived & suddenly we three had wheels, a car, in the form of Berger's black sunroof beetle. I began to see Mamet's design. Basically he was depending on me and Berger to get him out of the suburbs and into the "OldTown" of Chicago, where he felt he belonged. &, in short order:P This did happen, but not without both Berger and I feeling used and deceived. Without Berger and his car, we would have just been some late teens shooting baskets in the driveway of a suburban house. After LSD and rural Vermont and still being hunted down by the US Army: well, that was just a little TOO Surreal.
          Still, for about three weeks, while we hunted for and finally found an apartment, David kept things lively. It is true that David did get this all financed, somehow, by Bernie or David Real Family& this step-family of his, [none of this was ever clear; David just kept pulling out Aces from the bottom of the deck] there deep in miles and miles from Chicago proper --- Deep, Deep, in THE SUBURBS.
The Question I have now is: WHO Was this man "Bernie" -- since Mamet introduced him to both Berger & Me as his Step-father. & yet, I notice that his bio listes "Bernard Mamet" as his True, Real FATHER. Will the Mysteries Mamet perpetrated never cease. &, Believe me, this is just the beginning. As time went along, things became simply more and more incogruous.


             *******

      "OBFUSCATION"
      This interesting word has occurred to me about David. He tended to cover his tracks with "obfuscation" --- and the David Mamet of Chicago --- I Mean IN Chicago, operating there, like the Born Operator he turned out to me: well, he Obfuscated A Lot. But the Great thing about David is, he covered his tracks so well, you never saw the Ace being pulled from the bottom of the deck. Only Later -- much later, would your mind go back to things he did, and say to yourself, or a friend, "Shit, that sure was strange, he never was even at the bus station to meet me, when he knew for three or four days I was coming in that afternoon."
      Well, The New and Improved David Mamet clearly was who I met at Bernie's house. Now here is something that I cannot understand. WHO? was this guy, Bernie? David SAID [many times] "Hey, Eric, this is my step-Dad. You'll love him. He's gonna get us the Z Cards; he's got the connections with the Union. Just listen to what he says and do everything he says, and we'll be working on the Ore Boats in about 2 weeks."
      And this all turned out to be true. Mamet's scenario did play out exactly as he prophesized. But the problem was, the Birth Certificate. I did not have my Birth Certificate. Where WAS my Birth Certificate?
      Well, if I still had functioning family somewhere in the world, perhaps I could have gone to my mother or father. But, true to the Sixties, there was no "family" for me left. My mother & father were in the throwes of a divorice. Infact I cannot remember if I even had a phone number for them. They were as good as dead. Well, Uh, some office in Arizona would have it.
      I was born in Parker, Arizona. On an American Indian Reservation. These people were LAWYERS, right? Hey, David, I got an idea: Why not you & me & Bernie just get into that Monte Carlo and fucking DRIVE to Yuma?
      Uh, No. Too busy for that. Let's put in Bernie's secretary's hands. Meanwhile we need to find an apartment. Berger arrives suddenly. I am at a loss to remember where he stays. Perhaps at Bernie's --- but I remember well Berger arriving in his black VW Beetle with the sunroof. Suddenly we have Wheels. No more waiting to get around. We quickly are scouring the "Near-North Side" of Chicago, a place Mamet clearly knows pretty good, for an apartment. We find one. The money comes from Mamet or Bernie or his "other" family; not clear. Who cares?
      This was David's Show. One of his best, too.
      Obfuscation, my dear. It worked so well for awhile. One evening, we get spruced up in clean clothes and sprinkle ourselves in Old Spice Aftershave to smell good: We go to "Second City" [in Chicago's Old Town] the three of us. This is AFTER Nichols & May but well before Bellushi: & Right after we find the apartment, close by. The song, "Summer In The City" is playing on Berger's car radio as David tells us where to park. "I used to work here, they all know me," he tells me and Berger. We get out of the car and mosey towards a sort of outside cabanna-like set-up. Rarely have I ever felt so self-conscious before or since. We meet a bunch of blank stares as Mamet makes the rounds of the people he "Knows".
      So much of Chicago was like that for me and Berger. It was a hustle, a "let me tell you who I know," kind of interaction that made me and Berger more and more uncomfortable. But Berger & I had put ourselves into Mamet's hands & now we were paying for it. The birth certificate problems were true for both Berger and me for awhile. Then, it was just me. I was afraid, daily, that somehow I would be simply thrown away as a legal case that could not be won. This went on and on and on. David seem to thrive on the drama. We had "Our Apartment" and he had us. So it went, for at least three weeks. I can't remember what happened to "Bernie". But finally we were living in Chicago and we were almost Merchant Marines.
       So, this quickly became apparent, and a problem. Obfuciate, perphaps, until it is solved. Well, I knew THE MASTER. David Mamet.

MR. PRESIDENT, SIR!! SPEAK ABOUT OUR CHILDREN FOR A CHANGE

MR PRESIDENT, SIR: We Have No Money!! New Jobs? There Are None: 10% of our Homes are in Foreclosure.
YOU, President Obama --- An African American Who Came From a Poor Family? Why don't you talk about OUR NATION'S CHILDREN? THE NEXT GENERATION!! Not the "Economy."

WHAT IS MONEY FOR? How can we raise children with with no job or roof over our head? U Should Talk About This: NOT HEALTH-CARE. Can a Doctor help my child when we have no place to live? NO! Speak About Keeping our body & soul together, Mr. Presidient, not Insurance Companies.
What is Money for? For raising the next 2 or 3 generations to be decent people: that and nothing else, Mr. President. Sincerely, ~eric jefferson wells~ Asheville, NC~

1966: Mamet Reads Moby Dick & I Leave Vermont on a 10 Speed Bike & Peddle to Chicago

      Often times people ask me to explain what happened with me & David. Here I am --- a fairly obscure person, who fell into a deep friendship with someone who became massively famous. When I look back on these years that I knew Mamet, I often wish I would have sort of stuck with the guy, as a friend. Perhaps, then, I would not have fell into a cycle of homelessness that only got deeper and more deadly, the more I became bitter at the success & prosperity of nearly everyone I went to Goddard with [1963-6]
   I have often been encouraged, by social workers & other "do-gooders", to write about my years of being "Homeless". I was a social worker in Charlotte for many years and invariably this insistent litany of requests came from the people I worked with [1995-2003] in Charlotte, North Carolina's regional "Mecklenburg County Area Mental Health" govt. entity. Adult schizophrenics, delusional people who needed assistance keeping body & soul together.
    Indeed this post, that you are reading here, is a result of a quiet request from a wonderful friend from the early '60's, who I lost track of for years & years & years. Who, ergo, knew ZERO, NOTHING of me for 40 years.
   FOR ALL SHE KNEW, I WAS DEAD. This Beautiful Friend, Who I Lost Along The Highway of Life & who [now] utterly fails to fathom what happened to me. Well this woman gracefully & innocently asked me to "write a little" about how my demise came about.
   And so, how can I say this? It HIT ME LIKE A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE: It's Really David Mamet that's to blame. MAMET! MAMET came up with the crazy idea of me riding my bike to Chicago from Vermont! YEAH!
   Or, wait a minute. Let me see --- I take that back --- I came up with the IDEA of peddaling away from Goddard, the pot'n LSD Stew, the gay guys hitting on me in the communal bathrooms, all that. SO: I came up with this "This Land is Your Land/My Land" approach. You know, the Highway, The Desert, The Stars.
   Uh, OK, uh -- Sure! "This Land is Your Land"? -- YOUR Land!? -- did you say? . . . Since When, Buddy? "Your Land?" Fuck! YOU! Jerk-Off. IT'S ***MINE*** MOTHER FUCKER!! This's MY, FUCKING, LAND.
---    & See This? . . . This's also MY Gun. .
             MY. LAND!! MY. GUN!!
         GET IT???
   Mamet & I were kicking back in his little sanctuary-like-dorm-room on Greatwood Campus. I was leafing thru a collection of folk-song Lyrics laying around his room. It was a lazy afternoon & we were both skipping some class. Mamet was deep into "Moby Dick" -- sometimes he would say, "Listen to This!. . ." & read Melville aloud to me.    In this folk-song book was Dylan's "Blowing in The Wind"      . . . Yes'n how many seas can a white dove sail,. . . [etc, etc & then] ". . . Yes'n How many years can a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?" The Waste that was my life, it suddenly hit. It was like I had been slugged. I quietly looked over at Mamet, sprawled out on his bed, engrossed in his book & quietly said, "David? I got an Idea."
   "I want you to advise me about something."
   David lazily looked over at me "Geeze!" he said, as he often did, to the ceiling.
   He flashed that wonderful-warm-ironic-smirking-smile of his. He "Oh, No. OK, OK, OK." He laughed his warming, chuckle laugh & chided me: "Oh, Wells -- whatca got?"
   I just told him, "I think what I'm gonna do is, I'm going to get on my bike and ride away. Just ride away from this crap-heap. I'm gonna hit the road"
   .    I remember it so well: Mamet instantly warmed to the idea. Infact, he got ALL excited about this! ---- IMMEDIATELY. & For over an hour that afternoon, it was all we could talk about.
    Mamet came up with the idea of riding to Chicago. Of us meeting there. Of maybe involving Berger, too. The "Z" Cards? MAMET, DEFINITELY!! Give me a BREAK!! Who ELSE Woulda Thought Up Something So Crazy!?!
    "Fucking Yeah! Wells!! THAT'S BRILLIANT! Ride Your Bike Away. Oh, Holy Shit! Yes!! Ride a BIKE!! to Chicago, man. & I'll set it up with Bernie that you meet me there. We'll get an apartment on the North Side, near Second City. Oh, Wells. This'll be GREAT!!"
See: David Mamet was just God's Instrument! Buta very persuasive force in my pathetic 1966 orphan-life -- a crucial time.
   Precisely as he was to be a few years LATER, in Chicago Theater & later in Hollywood. Precisely in the way he moved a whole generation of writers and theater-goers in America. Yeah, Mamet & a whole pantheon American Ideas. David Mamet was & is --- A Force. Poor Eric, Caught in this Tornado of a Man of Ideas, then hammered on anvil of "Moby Dick", Poe & Hemingway.
   Plus don't ever forget Dylan & Woody Guthrie & Pete Seegeer; or that Viscious Freak-Show War we had all been invited to, Viet Nam. STANDING ROOM ONLY, LADIES & GENTLEMEN! GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
   Now, if you have read the previous two chapters of this blog [concerning David & I at Goddard] you will already know that I was considerably more "Famous" and "Known" than David was when I had met him.    So, as I thought about writing this Chapter, I was mildly surprised to realize that the story of my "Homeless Years" begin just about the time David and I get back from Provincetown -- i.e. Chapter 2.
   I was deeply involved with Ellen who, 3 years later, would kill herself at Goddard. It begins in the summer of 1965.
   My father & I were a bit out of touch with each other. No doubt I called him occasionally on the phone, but my father was very devious and did not trust the phone much [& he absolutely hated paying for a collect call] so ---- even if he accepted the charges, which was maybe half the time, i.e. he was not drunk the night I called him at home [i.e. if I ever called him at work it would only be because I was in the hospital or Dead --- my father would pick up the phone & simply say, "What is it son?" What I mean is: I never really knew if he was listening to what I needed to explain to him at ANY given time.
   I had found a summer job. In Vernont, right there at Goddard! I was hired to work in the "Records Office" --- with Corrine Mattuck, the Registrar. She had been my academic counsellor during my Freshman year. She was a sort of motherly figure. A stickler for detail, though & not an easy person to work for.
   Since I could type pretty fast, though & she liked me alright, she gave me a job helping her generate the transcripts. It was a very detailed and tricky job. You could not make mistakes. What you typed was written in stone. In Triplicate!! We used an electric type-writer and a blank form, with carbons, & I had to fit in all the comments and grades, etc. My job was to take her written draft & create an official College Transcript. No erasures, of course. Well I did that all summer in Plainfield, Vt. The weather was pretty nice, most of the time. I can't remember what I was paid, but it could not have been much. Infact it wasn't nearly Enough.
   I saved all my money so, on weekends I could afford the gas to drive my old '52 Pontiac down to Boston to spend precious time with Ellen. This was a big mistake because I was not taking good care of myself or getting enough sleep. I was not playing music either, or writing any songs. I was Depressed, really, although I was giving guitar lessons to a little girl [whose mother also worked in the Records Office, in Cabbot, one evening a week. I would drive, I think it was Tuesday evenings, to Cabbot and get a free meal from her while I gave her daughter lessons. Actually the whole summer was an insane and lonely time for me.
   At some point I remember I drove down to NYC and met a woman who I knew. She had known me pre-Goddard, Summer of '62. We had met at a kind of "Folk-Camp" run by the Putney School. She took one look at me and said, bluntly: "Man, you are looking old. You're hair is falling out. You used to be so cute, Eric." She quickly let me know she could not be seen with me. And, yeah, I was a mess. She had that right.     Although I was working full time, in Vermont, I slept in my car! Even in New York City, I slept in my car.
    I did not rent a room or get an apartment in Plainfield, like any sane person would have. I ate very, very little. I was a mizer with my money. See, I didn't [yet?] know how to live alone & take care of myself. . . getting some food & cooking it, buying suitable clothes or even washing my clothes! . . . or how to relax, kick back & watch TV. I was already a Hobo: The only things I cared about was my friends, singing & playing guitar & Ellen that summer. Nothing else was of much interest to me. My life was already On-The-Road. I LIVED "On The Road." Hell with reading the damn thing. Every once in awhile I would drive to Cambridge and sleep on Jeffrey's floor. Take LSD if I had a few days off. It was crazy, man, crazy.
   I always worried about Ellen, who I suppose worried about me. So by the end of the summer my life was already, taking on a shadow of "homeless-ness": IE sleep in the car & no phone # & no place to shave, no bed or stove or refrigerator or anything.
   Well, I show up at Goddard on the day of "Registration for Fall Semester" & go to find out my father has not paid my tuition. It was, if I remember right, $1,550. Which, back in those days, was a relatively average expense for a couple of semesters at a college.    But for a college STUDENT?! Today, if I asked you to go out in your neighborhood & find a million dollars to borrow, it would be about the same.     When I got my father on the line [collect, Goddard never even helped me reach him] he complained about the collect charges & said he did not have the money to send. I was stunned.     What was I going to do?
   Certainly everyone knows how crazy and wild Registration day is in September on a College Campus. It surely is, to this very day.
    everybody gettin' ready to party that nite, choosing classes, wondering if they are gettin' laid that nite with somebody they missed all summer, etc, etc.     Well, I suddenly had No Friends, when it came to money problems. I mean, Berger did really feel bad for me, but WE had no Money!! $1550.00??? You gotta be kidding! Perhaps, way back in June, I could have gone thru some agency in NJ or NY or Vermont that would have helped me finnesse a student loan. Or Something. Duh? But, now, here, suddenly, in September, I was told --- don't unpack your bags; you have no dorm room here; you cannot eat here; you have no funds to buy your books here; you cannot attend any classes either. Infact, buddy, for all we know --- you're trespassing! So, Get Out. Or come up with the money ---- in 24 hrs. You Have 24 Hours.
   THEN: a professor, Will Hamlin, who was on some academic review board of the school, heard about my showing up without my tuition paid-in-full & put my name on a list of students who were to be "reviewed" for both behavior & standing. Corrinne Mattuck [my boss that summer] did help me by placing a number of phone calls to my father & maybe even my mother [whoknows?] & got the tuition paid. My father told me months later he had to take out a real expensive loan at his bank to cover this. And who was I to ask for money when he had supported his own self, "During The Depression, Son" --- from the age of 15. That he had financed his own way thru school, etc. etc. etc. Berger was really irate over this &, the one time he had met my father, Berger had barely spoken to him because he got, ". . . such a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach," --- I think is about the way he put it.
   One thing that puzzles me is Mamet's reaction to all this & I simply draw a blank: I don't remember him involved in this crisis at all. Although, later, we became much closer & he would have helped in whatever way he could, probably I leaned most on Michael Berger and Michael Ventura. Ellen I remember was deeply troubled about me possibly having to leave.    Mamet's family -- as he had told me -- in Chicago were actually pretty wealthy. Infact, David had two families: His real family and his step-family. "Bernie" -- how often I had heard about "Bernie" and his hot-shot lawyer job with the Unions out there! Mamet painted a rosy picture of all this, although he did say his real father was difficult for him to get along with.
   Not that he could have gotten ME any money from Bernie! Jesus, no. Mamet and I were alike in that way: our families just expected us to hustle up whatever cash we needed. School of hard knocks, find a job & Get Paid. & Don't ever forget the Depression, kid. You think you got it hard? Please, son --- If We Starved When We Were Young, Then So Can You." -- That was the Mid-western ethic both David & I had been raised with.
   However, there was one CRUCIAL Difference: David could call his parents for Advice. Whereas my crisis was CAUSED by my parents!    But --- be that as it may --- none of that happened, because Mamet & I were not [yet] Really Close. But we were to become so, during the next whatever months and years to come. And, who knows? --- perhaps Mamet & I gravitated towards each other, not only because we were both astonishingly creative, in our own ways, but also because we both distrusted parental perceptions & believed most deeply in friends & lovers. Loyalty to one's Friends & Fidelity to a Vision were the touchstones that would become central to both our lives. So often in Mamet's work: Loyalty and Deception are central to the motivation of his characters in his work. And David was, of all things, so very loyal to our friendship and trust.
   True to form my father also went to his little manual typewriter one night and wrote me a short note, saying I had to come down there & sign some documents he had for me. [I remember meeting him in Manhattan, at his bank & conned into signing a bunch of papers that indebted me to the state of NJ for over a thousand dollars, later on. I signed them.     It came back to haunt me for year and years, that I had signed this shit on his advice. I never did pay NJ back either. The interest went higher and higher, until it dwarfed the Principal. Fuck them all, is the way I always felt. Miraculously, in about the year 2000, they finally gave up.]
   I had to take out a Student Loan for any further education of mine. That I was a burden to him. That he was marrying Vivian & my mother was filing for divorice & he didn't need me and my problems, that I had to start "Working And Taking Better Care of Yourself." Stuff like that. The New World Order of the Wells family had just been announced in no uncertain terms. Him not paying my tuition was just a "shot accross the bow." Don't think Robert C. Wells didn't have better aim & could sink my boat any time he felt like it. I assure you my father would not have hesitated for a moment if I ever challenged him on a issue like this. I loved my father, fortunately & --- though he was an impossible human being in many ways & had a cruel streak as deep as it was long --- ultimately he was an extroadinary man & when I look back on the tricks he pulled now and then, I can only marvel. My sisters and brothers were not so lucky. True they saw a hell of a lot more of him in his later years than I did. But, as the old saying goes, "familiarity breeds contempt." And since I was homeless and out of touch with my father for years and years, I kept the best parts of him in my heart. Whereas my poor brother and 2 sisters --- they saw all the dirt and lonliness turned bitterness that he was capable of. I did not nor would I have seen it. I would have just laughed and gone on and lived my life, as I knew my father did most of his tricks just because he was ten times as alive as any of his children. And he always had a grudging respect for my stubborn approach to life: as he could tell, I did not hedge my bets in Life's crapshoot. Truly, my cynical approach to life exactly mirrored his.
   So then there was about a week where I was on "Probationary Status"--- until the school officially let me in. It was not fun. If I had sex with anyone during all this, I bet it was only with myself.     Ellen, my 'Girlfriend', was never much help thru all this. It was, I think, in October or early November, she came to my room and I told her I was leaving her. She was a remarkably fragile person & it was about the most painful thing I ever did. Boy I remember wishing I had the money to make some phone calls in those days. I had noone to talk to. I was really getting lost. Goddard did send me to a psychiatrist who had an office way up, near the slopes, in Stowe. He was a wonderful man, astonishingly perceptive, who had only one arm. But, hey, what good could that really do? In the end, I was fucking on my own & I knew it.    I took up with a new and really pretty girl named Michelle. Beautiful body, fantastic dancer, kisser, and great, Great in bed. She moved in with me, as if we were suddenly husband & wife. She liked my music.
   Time passed, David & I got close, that trip to Provincetown happened, then I sort of draw a blank --- like a whole file of memory & time has been lost in there & suddenly it is early Spring, 1966. Mamet takes me into his room, insisting we be alone when we talk, & he tells me exhaustively why Moby Dick & Herman Melville are so crucial to, "Life & Everything! Eric. Ya Gotta Read Melville! It'll change your life." etc. etc. I do remember that so well.     One night he comes to my room and asks me if I want to take a walk. I say sure. It is sort of raining or misty. Nobody is out. We stumble around, like we always did, like we were nine or ten years old, graceless. I think we had a few Budweisers, too. Infact, almost definitely we did because we had sunk down with out feet in the mud, on a downed tree that was part of this nw parking lot the school had just created a few weeks before. We both hated this set of what are called "Mercury Lamps" --- i.e. they are what you used to always see in parking lots in those days, a huge ghastly glare and a low hissing sound comng out of them.
   "FUCK!! IT!!! Eric, listen to that thing hiss . . . Can you believe they put this stupid bright lights here in our wilderness? Can you believe they are spending our money to ruin our home, our college, our alma mater, our Robert Frost- peace-'n-quiet?" etc.    Mamet suddenly stood up and walked over to where the bulldozer had left a pile of debris --- he calmly fished out a bunch of rocks. He handed me one.    He said, "Let's Protest!!! Let's knock the thing out, killit!!" I must have agreed this was what was needed, that it was the solution to something & surely Melville would approve. Well, fuck, David would know. He's Read Moby Dick --- All of it!
   So for about five or six minutes we are aiming these rocks at this well-shielded but still not completely fool-proof parking-lot illumination device.
    All our rage, at Everything & Our Non-Place in It, was aimed at that lamp. It was pretty far up there, too. Suddenly both him & I actually start connecting with the glass cover. We realize that the only thing missing now between us is timing our throws, TOGETHER, so our rocks hit at the same time. We both drink some beer and catch our breaths: We count down 1,2,3, and throw together. BAM!! The light explodes, exactly like in Apocolypse Now, when they are fragging villiages with napalm. The light instantly is silenced & the woods grow dark all around us.
    David & I look at each other: I will never forget how surprised, shocked, afraid & elated we were, all a the same time., "Holy Shit!!!"
    Infact, almost defnitely, we both screamed, "OO''###AAUUaaaaurrrrrrggggggh, FUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHUUCCCK-IT" -------------I vividly Do remember how quickly we got the hell out of there, because the explosion was so loud, we were sure somebody would come to find us there if we did not get away, NOW!!
   This actually sort of changed our relationship. After that Mamet seemed to admire me a little and pity me at the same time. David & I grew closer that Spring. But, as time would tell, our friendship would always prove to be a walking-talking-contradiction. He loved me and couldn't stand me. He admired me and pitied me. He stood up for me and deplored me. He found me shelter and ripped me off. It was always like that.    And, from the little I have heard from some others, I was not the only friend [Then/'65'thru'68 or so] who ran up against this in him. Or maybe in all of us? Maybe. Maybe.


=========================================================================================================================================
    It was about this time that something serious happened to me. I supposedly had a roomate but he was of no use when I needed someone to talk to. I talked sometimes with Berger but I remember even that friendship deteriorated. My sex life was suddenly nil --- I had been there, done that. I stopped going to class. I had a music-theory class I loved very much, which I kept going to, because I loved the secrets transmutted via Piston's traditional but quite clear explanation of the hurdles I needed to jump.    There was one big problem: I did not have any experience playing the piano. I had not even learned to finger scales. I taught myself this, because my teacher [a pig from South Africa, who sweated under his arms morning, noon & night and stunk like a pig, and acted like one and looked like one, too.] As much as I was learning, one could not demonstrate or hear or express musical ideas minus a keyboard: Nothing Shall Be Revealed seemed to be the mantra cursing my life. I sunk into the first of many, many clinical depressions I would go through in the years to come. Sleep was the only drug I knew of. For about four solid weeks I barely could make it to the dining room once a day, often not even that.
   Mamet came to my room and told me to get up and come out for a walk. He brought me food every once inawhile. Cigarettes too. Somehow, I can't remember how, I got some money together and bought a bicycle, a 10 speed, almost new, that one of the rich kids had and didn't want anymore. It was about early May.     Mamet & I cooked up this plan --- Berger & Ventura were in on this, too as advisors, observers --- where me, him and Berger would meet in Chicago on a pre-arranged date. Mamet said his step-father Bernie could get us "Z-Cards" [a US Merchant Marine Document, Issued by the Coast Guard] because Bernie was an attorney for the Union that ran the Merchant Marine Hiring Office on the Great Lakes. i.e.> Iron Ore vessels that went up into Canada all summer and fall> and us 3 would make a lot of money doing this. A Lot of Money, he assured us.
   & Plus of course, "It will be Fun!" this is the declamatory kind of statement Mamet would make about anything. He was very optimistic, hopeful. Also he wanted to introduce us to His Chicago. He really did love the damn place
   Well, I decided, suddenly, my part in the plan would be this: I would leave Goddard early, not even finish the semester out. I would ride the bike to Chicago, cure my depression that way and have an adventure in the bargain. And also get in better physical shape for work because sleeping so much and not eating had really been torture on my physical shape as well as my mind.
   For a couple of days I sat around and tried to put a carrier made of a 2x4 & some nails and wire, on the back of the bike. It was a mess & would not work. So, not wanting to be at Goddard anymore I did something I wished, once I looked back on it, I had not done: I found somebody's bike on campus who had a "carry-all" made of steel, with one of those spring-loaded arms on it, stole it, got some wrenches & bolts & nuts & put it on my bike. Then I put a sleeping bag I had & & a few shreds of clothing that would fit on ithe back, tied it all down & sat in the shade, sipping a beer.    It wasn't long before Mamet and Berger & Ventura had heard I was leaving that day, thru the Goddard Gravpevine. Mamet came over and sat with me. He insisted I should eat before I left. Berger didn't say much, clearly amazed I was doing this. The time was mid-morning, a real nice sunny Vermont late Spring Day. We 3 went over to the dining hall & ate & talked a little.    Mamet was really like proud of me that I was leaving on this journey. We figured out that I could call one of the payphones collect, and not have to pay --- if I called at a specific time each day, so I could tell him where I was. So we had that as a touchstone.
   About one in the afternoon I stood there with my bike. Ventura had rounded up a bunch of people I only vaugely knew & there was a small crowd of maybe 15 people gathered around my bicycle.     Ventura had found an egg somewhere & he made a kind of crazy speech about how my bike needed to be "Baptized": then he took the egg and smashed it onto the front-tire of the bike. He may also have had his trumpet and played something. Everybody was laughing. Of course a joint was passed around. I remember this was one of the first times I ever got really paranoid smoking pot. This paranoia thing was to become a recurring problem, later on, socially for me.     After the joint(s) had been passed around, some of the Goddard losers Ventura rounded up, prophesized I would be back before nightfall. The egg yolk dripped down, off my front bike tire. Everybody stared at the egg dripping into the earth, for awhile, silent.       Well, too late my Brother, Never Mind: I didn't care anything about these Goddard People anymore & Ventura knew it, which is [of course] why he was making me look stupid in front of them. Berger, Mamet, Ventura, Me -- we were a literary Mafia: They were trash. What could be more obvious. & My role was to look stupid/kicked out/defeated. OK. But Mamet was Different. He was my travelling buddy, my companion. My One True Friend.
   So then, I finally spoke up: I said, "I have been at Goddard for three years. And I am happy to leave, but sad to leave you, my friends," which seemed to piss everybody off, that I would say such a thing. Apparently they wanted me to be drunk & stoned. They needed for me to say, "Fuck You". So my goodbye met a stone wall. That I will never forget! If Ever Goddard could be summed up in One Moment, it was this moment. There was just dead air & incomprehension. I remember everyone but Mamet & Ventura were staring at the ground.
    Even Ventura looked at me like I was living in a dream world. Then I turned to him & Mamet hugged me tight and wished me well.     "Now, Wells --- You gotta call me, tonight. Tonight, man! I'll be waitin' by the pay phone. Tell me how far you get. You be careful of the traffic out there on the highway. Meet me in Chicago. Oh, Wells, this Great!" Mamet's face shone with all the adventure that he knew I would have. His enthusiasm and faith in me as well as his benediction of friendship, sustained me on the long & painful journey ahead. So, then, I just jumped on my bike & rolled away. I found the dreaded road south & never looked back.
    I got quite long way that afternoon. The traffic was pretty thick for a few twisty stretches, I remember. But, oh, when that little ten speed got to the top of a hill & I began to coast down, Life Itself Began to Come Back Into My Eyes.     In 3 days I had covered almost the whole state and was entering UpState NY. Goodbye Vermont.     Onwards to Chicago.    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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#2 Traveling With David Mamet in the Sixties

   Let me tell you, Provincetown, itself --if you have never been there -- is a pretty unique place. For some reason, there were [& I am sure there must still be] numerous little summer-stock theaters operating there. Four or five, maybe.
  The little town is at the tail end of a peninsula, like a scorpion about to sting. There it is, sticking out into the ocean where, to get to it [I mean, back in the '60's, the time I am writing about], a lonely little ribbon of road winds miles and miles, with grey, windy beaches off to your right & numerous little antique villages scattered to your left. A lovely little afternoon drive from Boston, Cape Cod ["the Cape"] certainly was beautiful back in those days, and I bet still is, although I can't say for sure, because I haven't seen it in more than forty years.
  David suggested the trip. Obviously he was drawn by word of all the little theaters there. Now let me see: had he been there before? I hesitate to say definitely he had not. But I don't recall him saying, "We should stop by such&such a theater," or anything like that. So I very much doubt it that he had been there before. I certainly had not set foot there before.
  We had hitched down. Now did either David or I know where we were? --- that we were in one of the few outposts where homosexuals [as they were called then; there was not yet 'gay' this or that] or queers were. "Queer" was a derogative term often used then to make sure everybody knew he was a creepy/socially ostracized human being: "Man, you're acting like a fucking Queer!" Perfect for the high-school locker room where you snapped butts with a wet towel. That was par in the fifties and early '60's. Strange thing was, "queer" got adopted by gays in the late '60's and became respectable, a mark of distinction.
  Did Mamet & I know gays were quite common in "P-town?" Uh, quite honestly, no, we did not. Did Mamet know and just not mention it, it not mattering much to him? Uh, No --- & I'll I tell you why I know that for a fact: We told each other everything! That's why. And, boy if there was one thing we would have talked about, during a tricky hitch thru the maze of different highways we had to take to get there from Vermont [in one day!], it's something like lotsa homosexuals lived in the little town we were headed to.
  Unless you grew up 1)in the Midwest in '50's or even earlier & 2)have an intrinsic understanding of what friendship meant in the Sixties [specifically that decade], you will have a pretty hard time understanding the dilemma Mamet & I found ourselves in.
  At one level, this is no big deal: we are just two teenagers messing around for a few days; we are tired and gonna go to sleep, no matter what this guy expects from us. I mean, it's like, "dude, that isn't what we're into." would easily solve the problem. If he pressed us we just say: "Just what is it about 'No.' you don't understand?"
  But things had not exactly been set up to favor our handling the situation so adroitly as that. For one thing, it's pretty much David's idea that we are in Provincetown at all. For another, David is the gregarious one who has scored this offer of a place to crash. It's not me because I am the quieter one, even though I am a year older --- which is a lot in terms of growth and maturity. If you remember the difference between a freshman and a sophomore in college you know what I am saying is important: normally he would be deferring to me because of the age difference and hard-won battles I had already fought and won and was passing onto him.
  And here is where Robert Frost's . . .And I, I took the road less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.would be an appropriate observation to make.
  A fellow-classmate from Goddard who I now correspond occasionally with, was able to cut through all the crap of memory. She nailed it down perfectly in how I thought in those days. Perhaps I am like everyone else in the sad fact that, when young, each of us must struggle fiercely to retain even crumbs of maturity and self-esteem. But David was vastly more at ease with his own judgment than I; David made the snap decisions when they had to be made. Well, this Goddard classmate -- who knew Mamet well, too -- wrote the following, which distills perfectly the zero self-worth I had in 1964: I do recall a conversation you and I had once, sitting around --maybe in the coffee shop, trying to make some sense out of something . . .[she names two of our mutual friends] had sided with each other over and against me. I was sitting by myself reading but more staring into space and was, at the time, deeply disturbed over it. . . You just smiled a lot and said in something that was pretty ironic but God, I struggle to think and can't think of what. I remember feeling some real clarity through what you said but when I told you that, you thought that statement was kind of bizarre. I saw it as your not believing you could have/impart such clarity. You told me that none of it would make sense because it involved the two of them.
  Perhaps, ultimately, this esteem issue I was blind to became the Great Divide between David & I. Because he had, if nothing else at that time, a huge belief in himself. True, he was remarkably unformed, as even a personality. He was a totally green transplant from the Midwest, testing the waters of the East Coast for depth and temperature. And here we had innocently wandered into what was, more or less, the Capital of the Queers. We were both dramatically out of our depth. But it was Mamet who calmly took the bull by the horns.
  "Listen," he said, after we had stumbled into a separate bedroom, and things just didn't feel quite right yet. "Let me go talk to this guy." He stood up and smiled. David's enjoying thisI wondered to myself.
  "Okay," I said, and tried to kick back, lean back, all the while thinking to myself, "Shit. Motherfucker! Shit! This is really goddamn stupid. Cocksucker!."
  You couldn't really hear down the hallway, from room-to-room. All I remember is feeling, for a while, it was too quiet. David returned in about five minutes. He plopped down on the floor; there was only one bed.
  "Well, what did he say?" I asked.
  "It's not easy to explain," he said. "And also, it's funny as hell," he chuckled. "It's funny as hell. . . This poor guy. Hey, I know, lets maybe look around town some." David then looked right at me. Now, Mamet had looked "right at me," hundreds of times. But somehow, like a mirror to this all-too-quiet dump we had found ourselves in, invited into it by a stranger, David's gaze was strangely deeper and more piercing than I had ever seen him capable of. He had aged, in minutes, a year or more.
  You could hear a pin drop. You could hear the wind blowing softly outside in the cold, damp night. Something turned in my stomach that felt like both fear and disgust. It was light years from just this morning when we had started this serendipitous journey from "home" in Vermont. But, much worse, it was light years to the next.
  "Whady'a mean? We look around, we gotta leave here and who's to say he'll even let us back in?" I observed.
  The room was deadly quiet. This wasn't like us. What was it, just road-weariness? I wish!!
  Years and years later I would be sitting in a little pocket park next to the library in Pacific Grove, slightly buzzed from the quart of beer I had hidden in my guitar case, lying at my feet. I had been working for an hour or so on a song for my daughter who lived north of San Francisco with her mother, up in the mountains. She was four or five and I missed her terribly. I ran through the chords once again, a little mantra of sound, then took up my pen and wrote, And we're falling, falling, falling./Just falling, falling, falling/We're falling, falling, falling ---without a sound.And the same feeling of falling, I learned that night. David Mamet: my Best Friend.
  Some accidental evil, in dead earnest, had been placed between us. It was just a look on his face. Slowly I began to realize I was seeing a side to this Best Friend I'd never seen before. There was a lethal coldness to him that didn't fit the happy-go-lucky guy I knew. Later on, as time went on, he could temper it into a biting sarcasm that was a joy to listen to, as long as you were not on the receiving end.
  "Aint you hungry, Eric? This guy's aint offered us any food." If there was a ticking of a clock in the room, it would have sounded like gunshots. I would have had to instinctively duck. But a cool-as-a-cucumber set to Mamet's jaw told me that, somehow, whatever solution I would pose, would be the wrong one.
  "Goddamn, fuck it." I said, finally. "Let me go see what's going on with this guy." David just looked at me. It was at once an affirmation of the idea and a rebuke.
  "You go talk to him?" he asked, with a smirk on his face.
  "Look," I said quite reasonably, "This is no time to be roaming around the town. It's getting late; cold. We got no money; we got to sleep somewhere."
  "Talk to him? Do some good?"
  I got up slowly, stiff from all the jumping in and out of cars we had dealt with; from the creepty, foggy night, covering the dirty little streets like a shroud.
  "Yeah, I'll go talk to him," I said.
  There is a jazz song by someone, written around this time, named "Windmills of Your Mind." My head was inside a windmill. The hallway stunk with stale piss. At the threshold of the door I paused and looked back at Mamet. He was staring down at the floor. I wanted to say something to him, get his attention. But suddenly I felt so alone, I was shocked. If things made sense, I would have blamed this sexual predator who was we didn't trust. But, and I'll never forget this, I, at that moment, was furious with David. I knew instantly this was something I would never be able to explain to him. There was no explanation. I just hated him suddenly and wished I were back in Vermont. I may have agreed to hitch down to "the Cape" but this mess wasn't of my making. Mamet had set the destination and look where we found ourselves.
  Without looking up from the floor, Mamet mumbled, "Talk to him, then." He might as well have said, "Life's not fair," or some other observation. But, whatever he said then, the die was cast and a sense that he pitied me was in the air. What was it that he never told me this night? I never have figured that out. But, like I say, the die was cast.
  I walked down the long, dark hallway on my own. I don't remember much about what I did or did not say to this man. Was I afraid of him? Sure, probably a little & what teen-age, near-sexual-virgin wouldn't have been?
   I ever-so-lightly knocked on the door: I remember he opened the door when I knocked and put out his hand and told me his name. He had that kinda feverish look horny people have that don't know where they stand but are hell-bent on trying. He was not old or repulsive. He was just one of those "all the lonely people/where do they all belong(s)" going bonkers alone in tourist-trap America. Just some schmuck who's fate had led me and David to collide with and now was like the genie who would not return to his bottle.
  "Like I told you guys when I met you, we could get it on. It's fun." He kind of smirked when he smiled.
  "Don't you feel like it?"" he asked. He walked directly up to me and rubbed my cock thru my pants. He closed the door quietly. We were alone. Boy this nightmare will never end. I felt danger and was really was afraid now.
  I didn't move. I didn't encourage him and I didn't ask him to stop. He squeezed a little as he rubbed my cock, testing to see if it was getting hard. His hand pleaded. He needed a shave. There was quite of bit of alcohol on his breath but he didn't slur his words at all.
  My father had warned me in his office once about queers. He said they couldn't be trusted and to stay away from them because they were sick. I had never known anyone to be that forward sexually with me. Certainly no girl or woman had ever done that. I desperately wanted to have an orgasm with a girl, where she came at the same time. My father had told me about that, or hinted at it. It had never happened, in my few brief heavy petting sprees in high-school. But I had real healthy sexual appetite and had made love to a girl at Goddard but it hadn't gotten real serious. I had "had sex" with a girl. Never with a man. For me, personally, the Sexual Revolution --- as it has been called a million times --- began in that moment this total stranger in a wierd moment came onto me.
  "Nah," I finally said. It wasn't that I knew before that split second I would say that. Some part of me didn't even know if I could turn him down. The risk I was running in getting us thrown out of there was unknown. Everything about the guy was unpredictable. Including what the fuck I would say, now that he had come onto me and rubbed my cock.
  "Well you want some wine, right?" he asked and turned away. He went to a little side-board and pulled a glass from a shelf and poured me some wine.
  "Sit down over there," he gestured after the few steps to hand me the glass. "You're tired, right?" he asked.
  There was music in the room, or somewhere. In my head? It was jazz. Some ugly chick --- "Just Another Whore" as Heminway would call her --- hovered in the atmosphere. It pervaded the room like a menstrual stain.
  . . .a lonely corner of the world, two strangers meet/and hope that the sun that sets, will bring no regrets . . . the purr of a car prowling the neighborhood. This room is close to the street & to think of an escapade/a fly-by-night-affair/became an interlude/that I pursue everywhere  . . .  do,dah,do,do,do,dah
  I sip the wine and feel sick but safe, too. He hasn't gotten angry with me, just more and more needy, like I would throw him out of his own room or something. I think of Mamet, probably still staring at the floor. No doubt he is wondering what's up. What's up is the end of something. And the exhaustion that comes from having to makes me want to puke.
  "Nah," I say, more to the music and the singer, rather than to the guy who thinks sucking a dick is exciting sex. My dick? I think of how, during the Gold Rush, young children were kept alive by being fed the arms and butts of their dead parents by strangers; children who would have otherwise frozen to death because the leader of the expedition stupidly tried to wait out a storm as they approached a mountain pass in the Sierras.
  "How come you live in this little place?" I ask the wish-he-was-sucking-my-dick-sucker.
  "I work here. In the theater," he responds.
  This room sure is spinning. The windmills? Must be the windmills of your mind problem. God I hate this guy. I expect him to whip it out and just start jerking off for me. I am numb and the most response you could get from me would be, "Interesting."
  Two years later I would be hitching back to Chicago from a brief visit to see my mother. I am living in Chicago with a wonderful family [I think, then] who Mamet has introduced me to.
  My mother has been to Las Vegas; divorice granted, parents gone their separate ways; Dad's ready to marry a woman from China who works for the UN. My father is now strictly East Coast again --- raised in Staten Island, he faked it for years that the Midwest was home. Now he's back where he belongs, he thinks. He has nothing but contempt for my mother and made damn sure she got as little of his money as possible.
  I live nowhere, in some limbo; my mother has driven me to the Mississippi River bridge in Dubuque where I will proceed by my thumb back to Chicago.
  "Now, Ricky," she asks me, "Are you going to be alright?"
  "Oh, Mom, Ill be fine. I have a lot of friends. I'm looking for a job."
  "Well, that's good," she says and then a lost and lonely look suddenly came into her eyes that I was shocked by & without any warning, she started weeping. There on the highway, cars whizzing by dangerously. She was oblvious. Some sorrow I never wanted to see I was witnessing. She wept. For a long time I was afraid she would fall on the ground she was so overcome. I had to hold her and try, vainly, to comfort her from a sadness about a past I was hating to know about.
  "Mom. Mom. Don't cry. You'll be alright. You have to be strong. You have to drive home," I said. I had never, ever seen her like that. Never. Ever. Or did I ever again. She was trembling when she got behind the wheel and turned around and drove away, tires squealing, raising dust.
  The first car to pick me up was a faggot. It was early afternoon and he immediately got to the point. He wanted to drive to a secluded spot, off a dirt road. "It's right on the way to where you need to be so you can catch a good ride. You wouldn't have to do anything. Just let me suck your cock. You'll love it," he pleaded. That fever was racing through the front seat of the car. "Just let me suck it. Your dick?"
  I thought of my mother headed back to Cedar Falls, alone. I wondered if she was still crying.
  I looked right at the guy. He could barely drive he was so horny. I just shook my head.
  "No?" he asked, in a small, little-boy disappointed voice.
The Viet Nam war was starting to really rage and I was planning to earn enough money in Chicago so I could escape to Canada. So help me God. This little creep is lucky its not a few years later. I feel just threatened enough grab the wheel and smash his car into a tree.
  "Nah," I say. He is silent the rest of the way and in about ten minutes drops me off and I put out my thumb.
  Meanwhile, two years before, David has fallen asleep [apparently] when I finish the glass of wine that Mr. Lonely Hearts has plied me with. There's no bad feeling in the air because it never occurred to me that he was the predator seeking a life that was beneath contempt. It would take the United States Army to teach me that.
  The next morning I do remember we hit the road but I do not remember one single moment of our trip back to Vermont.
  By the end of the school "year" -- i.e. by June of '65, I had been propositioned often at school to get my dick sucked. But that wasn't where I was headed. Nope: it was all about pussy for me. And I had fallen deeply in love with a woman who, given just enough time and determination and LSD, would kill herself. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy died that year, too. And I had gotten out of the US Army flying into a true moment inspiration.
  "Sir?" I asked the officer who had lined us all up on first morning at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. It was just dawn, light was just filtering into the sickening clearing of pine.
  "Sir?" I asked again, stepping forward and raising my hand, hail-friend-fariy-well-met.
  The poor officer, filled with hatred, shot a glance directly at me. A furious bright light had suddenly ambushed him. There was dead silence for a second. Now was my chance. Before the big black Sargeant behind him moved. The black guy, with the billy club, his whole posture tensed, stiffened.
  "Shut the fuck up!!" said another observer from somewhere [officer?]; there was the electricity of a sudden riot in the air -- us orphans, we despised draftees, still in our street clothes. As Dylan had sung, now it was ingrained: "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose."
  For all that we faced in the war ahead, an insane question suddenly occured to me: & in a very clear voice, I asked this officer suddenly: "Sir!? Are you a homoSEXual?" Too many witnesses. The screaming cat was out of the bag! And, shit: The thug with the club may have been there to threaten, but the officer instinctively restrained him. WE all watched him shrink bodily as he shook his head. Then his lily-white face was suddenly beet red. We, all 45 or 50 of us watched his face. My question was an indictment; it was ringing like a thunder clap in the already hot, humid air. The stench of the war was everywhere. And I had fired the lethal weapon, that even the United States Army feared in their ranks: I knew the war was a fraud: & I had nothing left to lose now by shaming them for all these men to see.
  I was placed on "Medical Hold" after I ran all over the base and found the psychitrist's office. By that evening the Adjutant-General had interviewed me and told me to "keep your mouth shut and your head down." That night I was sleeping in private officer's quarters and could lock my door. Three weeks later I was honorably discharged from "the Service."
  I flew back to New York City and quickly found a cheap, cozy apartment, rent-controlled, near Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Oh, yeah, The Villiage is what I knew. What we all knew. But too many stinking speed freaks for me. The Haight had made it crystal clear that those fuckers were nothing but trouble.
  I wish I could know whatever happened to that officer. Wonder if they sent him back into combat. I've never before that, or since, seen any one man turn so many shades of red and purple in front of 45 men watching him. All the circle-jerks he had partaken in as a stupid kid came back to him, in full view of all who watched him that morning. If he did die in Viet Nam, then one of the Enemy died there. He was a pimp for the whore of the war. He deserved it.
  Well, I hope he reads this. If he's still alive. I wonder if he is still alive.
  And why didn't I go to Canada? Does it matter?

******************************TO BE CONTINUED******************************

Note: Copyright 2009: All Rights Reserved. You are encouraged to forward this column to your friends. Permission required to quote from this material. Email me: justliketomthumb@gmail.com

Ira Glass Is Panhandling on Facebook? Hey buddy --- take a friggin hike!

  Just a short note here: Ira Glass on Facebook is asking for your donations to "This American Life." radio show. My opinion: First, it's in impressive bad taste, is it not, to be asking for handsouts when you are a noted and quoted documentary journalist?
  Imagine Studs Terkel doing this with his radio broadcasts in Chicago! [Ira Glass originates his show from there, too or did anyway.] "Now, folks, Please send us a five dollar check in the mail today to keep this show on the air. You don't give bums a quarter? Well, they're hungry. And so is this show. Send some money to us here at the radio station."
  Far-fetched? Yes, well, back then, when journalists in the public eye had some ethical guidelines they actually followed. I have studied journalism in college [twice!!] and believe you me, about the very first class the professor instructs the student in the do's and don'ts of how you treat the public in the gathering of a story. First on the list is: you don't even suggest that there is a tit for tat going on here; i.e. you don't pay for an interview nor is the subject paid.
YES, you DO pay a quarter for the paper. The reader does. But you are not "donating" a quarter.
  In Ira Glass's world, you are. So, wait a minute, you are saying --- "Hey I like Ira Glass & I wanna "support" his radio show" -- so what's the harm? The harm is: journalism aint done like that. Remember Lenny Bruce's "like a schmuck alone with a dixie cup and a thread" allusion to a guy who insulted AT&T and whose service was suddenly disconnected. The subtle pretext of Ira Glass's begging is that [sotto voice, in a little aside to you], "uh, listeners, we just might have to shut the show down if you don't support us here. Just add it to your phone bill. We Need You!"
  So, is this begging? Well, if it's not, I'd like to know what you call it. [&,yes, ultimately he's on the corner, cup-in-hand, just like a bum who needs a quart of beer to get going in the morning. No difference, man. Imagine Edward R. Murrow's take on doing this!] or . . . To quote Ira, from a few days ago, We can't make the show without your help.
  OK, Ira how about donating to this column?
  At least I HAVE no money, no sponsors, no mega-media news conglomerate contracts; no signed obligations to my readers, here. See, I am not employed by anyone: You ARE! I am just singing in the street, "and the truth goes marching on." A Voice In The Wilderness, Can you hear me? Doubtful.
  Get honest about it and go out on the street corner and beg like all the other bums. Meanwhile I hope your listeners/readers/viewers pull the plug on you for a few weeks as payment for your ethical lapse on Facebook.
  Yeah, Ira -- I really liked your show and admired the imagination and skill it took to create each week etc. But begging from listeners? pleading we add five dollars to our PHONE bill?? To go to you or what? For what? You've already been paid by PRI. I don't get it.
  So documentary radio/TV journalism has come to this. It's pathetic.
  -----------------------------30--------------------------------

Traveling With David Mamet in the '60's

Thursday, December 31, 2009


  First, since this blog has just rolled off the assembly line, let me take a one small paragraph to describe what a "sunbug" is: broadly speaking it refers to sheer, naked ambition. We Americans know all about this and it shocks or dismays or otherwise unsettles most of the rest of the world. This blog is about ambition & David Mamet's characters, quite a few of them, reflect having a problem with "ambition". Is being ambitious good? Is greed good? Do we, as a people, commonly look up the highway to the horizon and see the rainbow of our "15 minutes of fame" to light our way?
  I think we do and I was fortunate enough to be around a few people, in my early '20's, who went on to become famous. David Mamet is one of them.
  David has always worked hard as a writer and you probably would not be reading this blog if you did not know his work. Funny thing is, when you know someone as a friend, BEFORE fame & recognition changes their life, you reflect on the work that person produces differently.
  I met David Mamet at Goddard College, a tiny little school set up in the boonies of Northern Vermont, a pretty little campus folded into the hills of a Robert Frost poem. It was started up in the '30's by some sorta radical-chic lefties from where? Boston and NYC, just like most of us were. Or soon would be. I had roamed the Village in 1962 and listened to alotta folk music. I was a folk-singer, too. I had seen Odetta and the Kingston Trio and Pete Seeger Live, man. And Mamet had schmoozed at Second City in Chicago, catching the Theater bug that would lead him to enormous fame as a writer/director.
  Chicago was a city I also knew, because I grew up in the Midwest. I had them coming and going! I was a unique little character in my own right, already. And my buddy, my newest and best friend of 1964, was David Mamet, Sons of the Plains.
  Now, Goddard College in the '60's was on the cultural map of the East Coast as a hip place to be. You got no grades there from the professors. You pretty much studied what you wanted. Every student took a 3 month "work-study" semester in the dead of winter to go off into the Real World and find a Real Job and Work. The real draw-back and what eventually killed the school as we knew it (It has been reincarnated several times and is reportedly alive and well today, though changed) is that there was only a small selection of people walking around campus as students to find a friend in. Plus you were set off a mile from a sleepy little Norman Rockwell painting-come-to-life called Plainfield, which is a story unto itself, a town completely separated from the lifestyle most of us came from.
  David was a year younger than me so showed up in my second, "Sophomore", year. He was from Chicago. Like I say, there were not many people to chose from so one cannot say for sure, in retrospect, if David and I would have been close friends in any other environment. But at Goddard, we clicked. Referring back to the subject at hand: was David Mamet ambitious at this time? Golly, no, not on the surface, at all! He was like a puppy after a bath in the sprinkler: energetic, open, funny, laughed a lot, cracking a smile every time he came to you.
  One thing to remember, ALL of us, back in those days, of the set where Mamet & I came from, were budding artistes.
  The later generations of teenagers who use ring tones, clothing or makeup or filthy language & rap-music to make their "unique" social statement are surely a mystery to those of us who came of age in the early sixties; we who, yes, are of the generation that watched, reverently [&rightly so, it turns out], as the Beatles & Bob Dylan & the   Stones, were born, literally before our very eyes.
  Many of our generation were revolting against the Catch-22 inherent in American life. With astonishing clarity as children, we had stood by helpless & repulsed, as the '50's were grinding on; we, each of us, alone, often physically sick in dead of winter, bided our time as our mothers and fathers stupidly enslaved themselves to a freaking 9-5 job and fretted over what the neighbors thought. McCarthy had cast his fascist shadow over America. Many of our parents all had ulcers, were in debt, were divorced or divorcing [as were my parents during that year I met Mamet]
  The point was: Be alive and Create. Shit, the most creativity our parents ever showed was picking out the new car every year! Screw That! We drove clunkers and fixed 'em up ourselves: we were making up our own rules. Yeah, Buddy: Look Out: Our Generation was gonna Sing and Write and travel the world on jets and be Free! The Republican Party & Frank Sinatra were OVER, man. We loved Rock'n Roll & The Blues.
  We may have lost JFK. He was dead almost a year now, but we knew what he had taught us: This is a NEW Frontier, baby! We got NEW Ideas and we're gonna Create a Different World with Art: You just watch. "Get outta the way, if you can't lend a hand, 'Cause the Times they are a'Changin', sang Dylan." And, by the way, that war in Viet Nam you got us signed up for? you gotta be kidding with that. Take that and the draft board and shove it. There aint gonna BE nor more war: are GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD.
  It was not some pose you put on for the world: you just really had already partaken of the soon to be bitter truth, that you either were creative or you were shunned. You died, socially and in every other way if you did not have some creative schtick.
  Mine was guitar and singing: infact, when I met David that Fall of '64, I had already written two or three songs, sung them in public at numerous coffee houses coast-to-coast, and one of them had been notated by someone at a drama workshop and been performed in a play.
I wasn't famous, yet, but I was more famous than David Mamet, or so the facts would seem. An actress of the stature of Rebecca Pidgeon would have been unattainable, even for a cup of coffee. Come to think of it, the woman I remember he was enamored of looked looked a lot like her.
  He was right out of high school & made it definitely clear, from the outset, he was into theater. I remember he got together, within hours [literally] of our first meeting, an improv group. See, he had worked as a sort of gopher, during the previous summer, at Second City in Chicago. He knew all the Second City people. In Chicago, he was already in the "In Crowd" --- this is history, according to his bio published everywhere these days. So I guess he had. Funny thing is: I never remember him ever talking about that. Gee, if I had met Mike Nichols and Elaine May and then went off to College, I think I would have told my friends what it was like to know them. And he never talked about that, so, one or two things seem to be true here: ONE/ He never had worked at Second City, yet. Or Two/ He was simply modest and unassuming and not thought it a big deal.
I am mystified with this, because neither solution makes sense. The David Mamet I knew would DEFINITELY mentioned his brush with the rich and famous if it had occurred.
  You see where I am going with this? Dylan worked in carnivals and hopped the freight cars, too, when he was 15. Or so the story went for awhile.
  Time kept on ticking, ticking into the future. David & I hitched down to Provincetown one rainy weekend from Vermont. It was just a lark. We both had girlfriends, of course, and I remember both of us were hurting from some of the mysteries of falling in love. I kept it all inside but that was the magic of knowing him as a friend because he did NOT! Hitching down a Vermont road in the early morning, [we walked and talked as we tossed our thumbs out to passing cars, the cold air creating clouds and fun and laughter --- always his laughter, and his big, brawling speaking voice] David laughing, "Man, she loves me! It's not fair!". I, with my guitar [I bet] slung over my shoulder [no case, like the moron I was, in those days] hitting the road with my Best Friend.
  Somehow we made it to Provincetown that night. We were working on a tight time-frame because 1)Of course we had no money, who did in those days? truly, we had no money! & 2)We had to get back to school and not miss too many classes.
  This little journey is still vivid in my mind for one important fact: We, almost inevitably, met up with a gay man. A little older than he and I, neither having even gotten into our twenties yet. Fucking Teenagers, man!
  The point we were making, of course, was that this was a Journey into the Unknown. We were FREE and footloose and we were leaving our love-life problems behind. Or so we thought.
And, with no money, we had to find a "free" place to crash for the night.
  I cannot remember the gay man's name but I can remember how lonely he was. And he was quite clear that a bed was available to us, individually or collectively, with a little sex thrown in. I think he even offered me and David a bottle of wine [surprise!!].
  Don't forget, we are both really young, teen-agers, out on a lark, far from home. And we are tired. It's been a tricky set of jumps from one highway to another and scrounging a ride all the way to Provincetown has really made us tired. Even David, always sassy and funny and clowning around, is subdued. It is night, near where the Pilgrims first landed. The Summer of Love is still four years in the future.
      ~~~To Be Continued Soon~~~

Copyright 2009: All Rights Reserved. You are encouraged to forward this blog entry & all others on this site to all your friends. Permission to quote from this material is by permission only. email = hwy61east@yahoo.com


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